Global conversations: recovery and detection of Global South multiply-marginalized bodies

ABSTRACT

This paper problematizes, in the spirit of loving critique, the paucity of global intersectional dis/ability politics in the fields of Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. In this paper, we attempt to account for a more global and humane, liberatory theoretical positioning of Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) by analyzing the human rights discourses employed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). DisCrit scholars emphasize ‘the social construction of race and ability … which sets one outside of the western cultural norms’. We push DisCrit further to (a) account for the impact of these western cultural norms and ideals in global and local contexts, and (b) problematize how the binary between the Global South-Global North gives impetus for and further reifies the global racist and ableist hegemony of western cultural norms, domination, and violence identified within human rights discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• DisCrit
• UNCRPD
• human rights discourses
• global south
• global north

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We acknowledge that the Global South is not monolithic, neither are its morals and values. However, the collective nature of approaches and ways of living in many of the Global South countries historically contrast with individualistic approaches to various UN conventions.

2. In this paper, dis/ability means that both disabilities and abilities are socially, politically, emotionally, culturally and historically constructed in societies. Our use of the slash does not represent a binary between disability and ability to view people through a lens of productivity. Rather we use slash to disrupt how ‘disability’ is constructed, identified, controlled, intervened, fixed and maintained globally (Taylor, Ferguson, and Ferguson 1992) through systems such as special education, and national and international laws and policies, such as the UNCRPD. Furthermore, and complementary to DisCrit, we seek to understand the intersectional experiences of disability through the voices of people with disabilities at their nexus of multidimensional identities (DisCrit, Tenet 4). Given that DisCrit emphasizes the social construction of disability and ability (DisCrit, Tenet 3), we also use the slash to underscore the non-monolithic and context-specific nature of both disability and ability, as opposed to reinforcing a ‘fixed’ notion of being human (Wachsler 2012). When we do use the term ‘disabilities’ or ‘disability’, it is to acknowledge and contrast how the use of the slash, like person-first terminology, are generally used in the academy and by non-disabled people, and are not necessarily supported by dis/abled people themselves, who would rather ‘say the word’ as a term of identity, pride, and culture.

3. By a global intersectional dis/ability politic we refer to how dis/ability is created and experienced by Black, Indigenous and Youth of Color globally through war conditions, mass destruction, globalization, as well as Global North interference and invasions in countries of the Global South for economic and political purposes.

4. The concept of inclusive education broadly links to school improvement efforts, both structurally and ideologically. Structurally shifting away from the traditional and segregated special education settings and ideologically valuing human differences (Florian 2014).

5. The Salamanca Statement is a rights-based international policy of UNESCO (1994) on inclusive education for ALL students, especially emphasizing children with special needs (Migliarini, Stinson, and D’Alessio 2019).

6. Hegemonic power structures are dominant ways of being and doing within a society that favors some people by allowing them to exercise domination over those not favored through these social categories (Crenshaw 1990).

7. We understand that racism may be experienced differently in different parts of the world. For instance, people may experience racism through their ‘lower’ caste status or tribal affiliation in some Global South countries.